Last week was a rough and busy week. I had three papers due on Friday – one of which was in Spanish – plus a crap ton of notes I had to take on top of all of the other day to day class stuff. And then there was the election. And after that fiasco, my sleep pattern was off for the rest of the week (I averaged about 5 hours a day). Basically this means that I have next to no motivation to do anything this week. So in the weeks when the good things in life aren’t motivating me, I need to make my own motivation. Read on if you want some great tips on how to create your motivation.

// Relieve Stress

Usually the thing that causes a lack of motivation is high levels of stress. So you need to do something to help you relax.

There are a number of different ways to relieve stress, and they will be completely different for every person. Laughter and exercise are good stress relievers which means cute and funny YouTube videos and a good jog or jump romp.

If you can’t tell by now, I am a huge fan of yoga. Seriously, anytime I do yoga I feel almost immediately less stressed. So that would be my immediate go to for stress relief. Even as short as ten minutes will get you feeling pretty good. Do You Yoga has some great ones, if you’re looking for something a little longer, Adrien over at Yoga with Adrien has a good list that I can’t wait to try.

// Plan it Out

Sometimes planning your week out takes a little of the edge off. It’s easier to see exactly what needs to be done when you have a game plan.

If, like me, you have a lot of stuff do on one day you need to create fake deadlines. What that means is that things that are going to require the most amount of time are going to be due the day that they actually need to be done. Other less time consuming things will be given an earlier due date. The idea here is to get through things as quickly as possible to leave time for the real big ticket items.

For this assignments that are long and atrocious, plan to do them in little chunks. For example, let’s say you have a 2000-word paper due on Friday and you’ve already gotten 1400 words written. On Monday you should focus on editing the current work and deciding what else needs to be added to the essay. Tuesday could be devoted to collecting research. Wednesday and Thursday are devoted to writing- 600 words each day to hit that goal. And lastly, Thursday night or early Friday morning is for last minute sentence edits.

The goal is to break things into manageable chunks so that you feel less overwhelmed.

// Make a List

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the good things that are happening. And this last week was definitely one where I really needed to remind myself of the good. So, because of the election, here’s my list of good things:

Catherine Cortez Masto – first Latina to serve in the Senate

Kamala Harris – first biracial woman to serve in the Senate

Pramila Jayapal – first Indian-American woman elected to the House of Representatives

Darren Soto – first Puerto Rican from Florida in the House of Representatives

Adriano Espaillat – first Dominican-American elected to the House of Representatives

Lisa Rochester – first woman and African Americans from Delaware elected to House of Representatives

Marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts, Nevada, and California

Kate Brown – first bisexual candidate to win a gubernatorial race ever, she’s now the Governor of Oregon

Ilhan Omar – first Somali-American legislator, elected to the Minnesota State Legislator

We stood in solidarity with those who were afraid because of the election